


Dead Like Wilson

by WebbedUpKatanas



Category: Deadpool - All Media Types, Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Blood, Brief character death, Death, Injury, Kinda Original Female Character, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-22
Updated: 2014-06-22
Packaged: 2018-02-05 18:47:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1828429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WebbedUpKatanas/pseuds/WebbedUpKatanas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the prompt: Peter dies and meets Wade's mother, who thanks him for being so nice and patient with her son. Brief character death happens, and some mild violence at the beginning so be warned. Enjoy!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dead Like Wilson

**Author's Note:**

> I'm still not sure I like how this one turned out, but I'm uploading all of my fics so here you go. Hopefully it's not as bad as I think it is.

Unfortunately there haven’t been many days in Peter Parker’s life in which he can claim that not a single thing went wrong.

Take today for example. First he spills his orange juice all over himself at breakfast, then he loses the key to his apartment, and now… this.

His body hits the ground with a wet crunch.

He barely has the strength to roll with the impact, but he still has the presence of mind to think how sad it is that he’s getting his ass kicked by Electro. Again. He really prefers this power dynamic the other way around. Hopefully he wont make him beg again because, that’s just adding unnecessary insult to injury, and he’s already feeling both insulted and injured enough for one day.

Peter has a cracked rib, at least two broken fingers and multiple lacerations covering most of his body. The amount of blood dripping down from his right shoulder is alarming, but it’s the shocks that are really doing the damage.

Electro is speaking, probably caught up in a villainous rant, but he’s finding it difficult to concentrate on the words as another bolt of electricity rips through his body.

His muscles tense and for a terrifying moment he can’t move, can’t think, as blackness licks at the edges of his vision.

When the shock ends his heart is pounding hard. He can feel the beat through his entire body, all through his aching limbs right down to the tips of his broken fingers. ‘Good,’ he thinks distractedly, ‘Good that means I’m still alive.’

Only maybe it doesn’t, because it’s pounding too hard. Too fast.

The ringing in his ears drowns out the sounds of the world around him and he’s barely strong enough to have a last thought before the world around him fades to grey.

………

 

He doesn’t come to right away.

Instead edges of awareness flicker through the mist of unconsciousness as he drifts heedlessly through the darkness. It’s peaceful, in the sense that he isn’t a self and there is nothing to worry, nothing to fear in the face of total annihilation.

That is until the strands of his mind are tugged back together and he snaps back into being with a jolt that reminds him of another current of electricity. For one brutal moment he experiences a sort of phantom pain before he realizes that he’s is fine, he feels completely healed.

“Where am I?” he says aloud, but his voice sounds distant to his own ears, and there doesn’t seem to be anyone around to listen. The landscape is grey and bleak, the same colour that had enveloped the world as he passed out when Electro-

He feels cold suddenly as realization washes over him.

“Am I dead?”

He doesn’t expect an answer, which is why he almost jumps out of his skin when a booming voice sounds around him like a clap of thunder.

“Unfortunately. It wasn’t you I was after, but I suppose you’re as close as I’ll ever get.”

The figure appears before him as though it had always been there. There’s no ornamentation, no fog or ominous music, or ironic crack of lightning, just a skeletal face peering at him from under a dark hood.

“You- you mean Wade don’t you?” he asks. The skull remains impassive, and the figure makes no response but Peter knows. Wade’s told him about his affair with Death, but part of him had never fully believed him until now. It’s hard to argue when the Being itself is standing right before your eyes.

“Is- this isn’t… heaven is it?” he asks. Her laughter seems to come from everywhere at once, and he’s pretty sure if he had any blood left in his veins he’d be blushing furiously.

“I take it that’s a no,” he mutters dejectedly.

“Someone wants to see you,” she booms in answer, and Peter finds himself looking at empty space again when she vanishes.

“That sounds ominous,” he mutters. “Because being dead wasn’t terrifying enough.”

Then, for one brief shining second hope blossoms bright in his chest, only to deflate when a new figure appears before him. It’s not a man like he was expecting, and though the woman before him is blonde he doesn’t recognize her.

“Um, hey,” he says, rubbing a hand on the back of his head, though the sensation is dulled in a strange and rather frightening sort of way.

“I think there’s been a mixup,” he adds eyeing her warily.

There’s nothing spectacular about her, besides the fact that she looks dead. She isn’t rotting thankfully, just very pale and very still and he’s betting she’d win a staring contest with that cold vacant gaze she has going on. Although at his words he can almost swear he saw her lips quirk up the slightest bit.

“I suppose you were expecting someone else?” she says. Peter’s pretty sure that was a hint of amusement in her voice, and that of all things finally puts him more at ease.

“You could say that,” he replies carefully.

Up until she appeared he’s been too scared to look down at himself, but seeing her take form bolsters his courage. He appears to be in one piece, still in his Spider-Man costume, although it’s no longer torn, singed and bloodstained.

“So, have we met before?” he asks awkwardly looking back up at her. He has a funny feeling he’s going to be the life of this party given what he’s seen of her so far. He chuckles at the pun for a few seconds before the somber realization that he’s dead as well strikes him full force, leaving him reeling.

“No, but you’ve met my son,” she replies unhelpfully. He’s just about to start running through ever man he’s ever met in his mind when she seems to realize she isn’t being helpful.

“Wade,” she clarifies.

He can’t help the chill that runs through him at the word. Wade. Wade who can never die. Wade who can never follow him here. He can’t fathom the idea of never seeing him again.

“I died-”

“I know. Cancer, when he was a kid. He told me,” Peter tells her. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. The only thing I regret is leaving him behind. He’s been trapped in one way or another ever since.” She looks so sad that Peter tries to touch her arm in a soothing gesture, but his hand seems to melt into the touch, along with the flesh and bone of her arm.

Clearly touching is off the table.

“Oops. Sorry about that,” he says bashfully, running his hand through his hair. Again, it feels strange, like there’s something between his hand and his head to dull the feeling.

“It’s funny,” she continues unfazed, but the sour tone of her words reveals the underlying bitterness there. “When he was born, I remember thinking what a shame, my kid’s been doomed to a mediocre life. I thought my family was boring. If I had known back then what I do now…” She grins, a broken expression that reminds him so much of Wade that he flinches in shock. “Hindsight’s fifty fifty.”

Peter shifts uncomfortably. Meeting the parents is always awkward, but more so when you are facing his mother down alone and she happens to be dead. Even looking at her is creeping him out. There’s just something off about her, like he’s talking to someone through a mannequin. She just doesn’t seem human.

“I wanted to thank you,” she says. In her cold, detached tone it’s hard to discern what kind of emotion she’s trying to convey, but it’s either genuine gratitude or heavy sarcasm.

“You’ve done so much for Wade. You keep him grounded, you keep him sane. You make him want to be a better person, and you protect him from himself. He needs that.”

Definitely sincerity then. In fact, for a moment there he could almost see her as a person, as the mother that Wade lost.

“I- thanks I guess. I’m trying. He makes it hard sometimes but…” he trails off uncertainly. The thought of Wade is scaring him, making him wonder what he’s going to miss on earth and how Wade’s going to cope. And thinking of that reminds him of all the people he’s losing and all the things he hasn’t done. He can’t help but imagine the people who will die if he isn’t around, and he rails against it with every fibre of what’s left of his being.

“I need to go back,” he says, panicking. If she’s thrown by the non sequitur she doesn’t let on.

“I don’t know if you can,” she tells him with the barest flicker of something crosses her face. It seems a lot like pity.

“Even if you can, what are you going to do? People are going to hurt him People are going to hurt you, and they’ll hurt each other. It’s what people do. Pain is the only constant I know of there.”

Peter looks into her cold dead eyes, barely managing to suppress his shudder as he remembers with a start that he’s speaking to a corpse. Or a spirit. Whatever it is, it isn’t alive. Although to be fair he supposes neither is he.

“I’d like to see them try,” he says defiantly.

The smile he earns this time reminds him of Wade as well, although this time it makes the space where his heart should be beating tighten almost painfully.

And then, just as quickly as she appeared, she starts to fade away.

“Wait, what- where are you going?!” he asks, starting to panic again. He doesn’t want to be alone here. Doesn’t know what will happen to her, or to him, and it’s enough to terrify him.

“I almost forgot,” she calls, her voice echoing as though it’s coming to him through a tunnel. Her body is entirely gone, her voice seems to be coming from far away but all around him, ringing through the landscape of death, clear but distant.

“Gwen sends her love. Ben wants you to know after all these years, he’s still proud of you.”

He can’t cry here. He can barely remember what the impulse to cry feels like, but her words cut him to the core, peeling back the layers to reveal the young man who loved them both beneath the years of experience he’s gathered around him since then.

“Thank you,” he whispers, although he knows she’s already gone.

He’s not sure if he should be relieved or not when Death returns to stare at him eerily, her teeth bared in her ever present grin.

“Doesn’t anyone ever walk here?” he asks, annoyed at himself for jumping.

“So what happens now?” he prompts after an awkward pause, frightened of the answer. Whatever kind of body he has in this place has gone cold and clammy in fear, and the warmth he felt with Wade’s mother nearby has completely dissipated leaving him freezing and bereft.

Death’s skull seems to leer at him, the empty eye sockets disturbingly dark and empty.

“I’ve waited for you this long, and for him as well. I can wait a bit longer. Tell him you're my gift,” she hisses, reaching out her skeletal hand to drag the frigid bones of her fingers across his face in a chilling caress.

Peter is about to ask her what she means when he finds himself staring at a white ceiling, the lights too bright for his tired eyes.

“Well that was a jarring transition,” he moans pitifully. Everything hurts and the lights are blinding. His senses are overwhelmed to such an extent that his spider sense starts going off to compensate for his inability to process his surroundings.

“Huh. And here I was thinking your first words were going to be something along the lines of ‘Oh Wade my love, I’ve come back to you,’” a gravelly voice croaks.

Peter cracks an eye open to see Wade’s face hovering over him with a look of wary confusion.

“You are Peter right? Not some sort of zombie, or demon or something? Because that would just be too cruel, and I honestly don’t think I’m up to killing you right now.” He pokes him a couple of times, though Peter notes he avoids the cuts and bruises.

“It’s me,” he rasps. Wade lifts a cup of water to his lips and he takes a sip, relieving the worst case of dry mouth he’s ever experienced.

“Coming back from the dead always makes you parched,” Wade explains, placing the cup back down on the table beside the hospital bed Peter now realizes he’s lying in. “Also, that was holy water, so looks like we’re doing well. I’d chop off your head just in case but that seems sort of counterproductive doesn’t it?”

When he looks back up at Wade he looks utterly relieved, almost blissfully happy, which would be adorable if every part of Peter didn’t ache so much that he wants to cry.

“I was dead,” he says, and Wade nods.

“They wanted to take you to the morgue, but I made them wait just in case. It’s not so much fun waking up in a body bag let me tell you,” Wade confides. Peter realizes they are holding hands, though Wade has to be gentle to avoid jostling his broken fingers.

The doctors will be in soon he’s sure. They’ll poke and prod, and exclaim in wonderment over him and ask a million questions despite how tired he is, but he needs to find the words to talk to Wade first.

“She says hi.” From the look on Wade’s face he knows who Peter means.

“So, you met the other woman. How did she look?” he asks eagerly.

“Skeletal,” Peter tells him honestly. Wade smiles brightly.

“That’s my girl.”

The silence that creeps between them is filled by the sounds of life coming from the hallway. Patients and nurses, doctors and families all bustling around outside as Peter tries to decide if he should tell Wade who else he met.

“Well if you’re okay I should get going,” Wade says abruptly, standing and giving him a quick peck on the forehead. “I’ve gotta shove a lightning rod up Electro’s ass and stick him out in a storm, see what happens.”

Peter squeezes his eyes shut. The decision has really been made for him, because as nice as the idea of revenge is is while he’s still feeling the full brunt every injury, he knows he can’t let Wade go after him.

“Wade, don’t kill him,” he sighs. His head really hurts, and he desperately wants to sleep, but if he drifts off now Electro will be nothing more than a smear on the pavement by the time he wakes up.

“Don’t worry Pete. I’m not gonna kill him. But by the time I’m done with him he’s gonna wish he was dead,” Wade growls seriously.

Desperate times call for desperate measures Peter thinks with a resigned sigh, preparing himself for the pain.

“Wade, wait! Ow-” he lifts himself up and is met with a wave of nausea as the room blurs around him, but Wade is back at his side in an instant.

“Woah there cowboy, take it slow,” he says, easing Peter’s head back down onto the pillow.

“Did you just call me cowboy?” Peter asks weakly. His attempt at laughter jars his broken rib, and he winces in pain, earning him a soft sound of disapproval from Wade.

“Please stay,” Peter says once he’s settled back in, reaching out to tangle his fingers in Wade’s. The merc dithers for a moment before sighing and pushing the button to call the nurses in.

“Okay. But tomorrow I’m ripping Pikachu to shreds,” he says, clambering up onto the bed and only barely jostling Peter as he does so.

“We’ll see,” Peter rasps tiredly.

A nurse comes marching in looking angry as hell, probably assuming Wade is disturbing her for nothing, and almost faints when Peter waves at her feebly from the bed. She rushes back out, already yelling for the doctor with her face as white as a sheet.

“They’re going to make you move,” Peter tells him sleepily, already drifting off into the solace from pain that slumber provides. Wade gently squeezes his broken hand and kisses his hairline.

“I’d like to see them try.”


End file.
